Hello all.. new SH3 player..

[GC1CEO]

Hello everybody, I just got SH3 a week ago and been learning the game. I have been playing sub sims all the way back to 1984's GATO. I haven't actually played a historical sub sim since Wolf Pack, mostly 688i and then Sub Command. Its quite refreshing to see how far the realism in the Silent Hunter series has gone, first game also I think you could command a Type II U-Boat.

I finally got the hang of things while going through the Naval Academy, took me a few days to get through Torpedoes and Convoy Attack. Remembering bits about gyroangles, etc.

After a few attempts at a career, figuring out what to do exactly, I finally am in the middle of my 2nd patrol on my first REAL career. I haven't sunk anything too impressive yet, just small stuff like Small Merchants/Coastal Merchants. I have been overflown once or twice on my 1st patrol but nothing else happened.

I'm still operating on less then 100 percent realism, I am handling with automatic targetting as I dont feel comfortable to be able to manually target quickly enough (but have practiced some). My big annoyance with the map tools is theres no time marker, wish there was some way to make labels on the maps so I can mark times with various contacts, would make manual targetting to determine course/speed much easier instead of trying to be precise with a stopwatch.

Does anybody have a good career guide, or a post that has a lot of really good career/patrol tips. Most of what I have read so far has just given bits and pieces and doesn't answer things like are shipping lanes simulated in the game or does the game just drop a few rare merchant ships here and there and I have only encountered small merchant ships so far, where are the large ones and is it worth it to try and hit one of the enemy harbors to try and bag me a docked warship or two.

Also curious on the AI, does the AI just use very fixed courses or will it set courses to any possible degree (will it set a course of 2-3 degrees versus only being N, ENE, NE, etc).

AI's ability to detect you is also something else I'm a bit confused by, how do I know they have detected me if they are a merchant. When I encounter merchants they are already at their top speed of 9 knots or so, should I just think they have detected me if they start to zigzag. What is the safest maximum visual range where I can detect them but they probably can't detect me, etc.

Also does the AI like radio for help/reinforcements, for help if a merchant knows its being attacked will it radio for warships or airplanes to come its way or is their appearance merely a matter of pre-determined courses and such.

[THE_MASK]

The best tip i can give is download the NYGM tonnage war mod when it comes out .

[AO1_AW_SW_USN]

I'm new to this forum as well, but I'm not a rookie when it comes to this game.

A lot of answers to your questions can be found here:

http://www.communitymanuals.com/shii...itle=Main_Page


There's also a ton of resources and information floating around here and at the official UBI.com Silent Hunter III forum found here:

http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/frm/f/857101043


Another great U-boat (not SH3 related) webiste can be found here:
http://uboat.net/



Good luck to ya, and welcome to the forums shipmate!

[GC1CEO]

Yep read through the community manual, which was fairly helpful, already.

Still can't find an answer to my biggest question which is when/where do large cargo ships make their appearance, in terms of both neutral and allied shipping I have only encountered coastal merchants and small merchants so far. Are they simply rarer, just my bad luck or do they not appear until later in the war?

[AO1_AW_SW_USN]

They're out there, trust me.

Try the "hot spot" of BF13 and BF15. I usually encounter a lot of lone merchant shipping and the occasional large convoy.

Just try not to go there from mid 1943 unit May 1945... unless your either really experienced or really crazy (or both).

Did you mod your game? If so, do you use SH3 Commander in conjunction with the mods?

[GC1CEO]

Not using any big mods or SH3 Commander, the exception are some audio/gfx mods that dont affect actual gameplay.

Anything good to go after when I'm in a IIA or IID?

[AO1_AW_SW_USN]

Can't tell ya, I'm not a "Canoe Captain". I'm an IXC driver who hunts off the Straits of Gibraltar and the Caribbean.

Those types of U-boats suffer with range and weapons loadout. At least try a VIIB or VIIC when they become available.

You may also want to look into all the great mods that are out there. If it's realism you want, there are two distinct mods that will knock your socks off, RUB and IUB. The SH3 Commander is a stand-alone program that gives you enhanced immersion as well as control of your career and gameplay settings. You may want to look into it because (in my humble opinion) is a whole lot better than the vanilla SH3.

[VonHelsching]

Originally Posted by GC1CEO

What is the safest maximum visual range where I can detect them but they probably can't detect me, etc.

Also does the AI like radio for help/reinforcements, for help if a merchant knows its being attacked will it radio for warships or airplanes to come its way or is their appearance merely a matter of pre-determined courses and such.

Visual range depends on weather conditions while sour sub is surfaced. A rule of thumb would be to go to periscope depth when at 4500-4000 m while approaching a ship in good weather.

Since you are a new player, I thing thad BdU would approve to use less realism settings and try the "cheat-o-meter setting". I do not remember how it is called but and cannot open the game right now). It is an option in the realism settings that puts a little sub icon in your screen. The color of which changes from green (undetected) to red. Then you can really have a good feeling on visual abilities merchants, and visual, radar and passive hydrophone of enemy units, including planes (of course planes do not have hydrophones, but DDs do). Also while approaching DDs running on slow speed and silent running makes a lot of dofference.

It also all depend on if the enemy units are Neub, Veteran or Elite.

Concerning your second question, this has happened a lot of times after being spotted.

But if you are lucky enough and close to your airbases, you can radio your contacts and see some Luftwaffe action as well.

Welcome to the game!

[jasondef]

I found the community manual was main source of info for me starting out and good for tips Also are a couple of other third party manuals with good tips:

SH3 Survival Guide:
http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/dosw...t_hunter_3.txt

Jason's SH3 Survival Guide (not me, different Jason)
http://edseek.com/archives/2005/05/0...urvival-guide/

Red Devil Fan site (rt. side of page has a couple tutorials and hints)
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/dominicoba...HunterIII.html

Avon Lady's FAQ had some useful info:
http://www.theavonlady.org/thesh3faq/

There are a couple of mods out there that add some tools to the NavMap, and others that alter or add features/info to the Nav map itself. Some of the tools mods are thought to be essential to the manual targetting veterans out there.

Use the search feature on this forum too for any particular question you have, many posts and threads on every topic exist by now on every aspect of the game. The search isn't that efficient though, so if you can't find answers to specific questions, just ask on the forum as a last result (or first result for that matter, but the database gets swelled with the same question over and over again, so its best to search first)

As far as the fixed courses for the AI, you can actually open up a file with the campaign editor to view all of the routes and courses that convoys, single merchants, task forces, etc. will take, so in a sense they are fixed, with a starting point, waypoints, and end destinations. There are just so many though, at the very least hundreds, if not thousands, covering practically every mile of ocean, that its random in the sense that you don't know when and where these routes will be in use at any given point in the game.

And unless you have mods, merchants will run straight courses (until it reaches a waypoint) and will only start to zigzag when you are detected. Even if a uboat is suspected within a close proximity by a destroyer escort and not actually pinpointed where it is yet, the merchant/convoy may start to zigzag even though they don't know exactly where you are.

In the closer in zooms on the NavMap, clicking on a ship will give you a large circle around the ship, I think this is the maximum range for them to spot you under ideal conditions, if they are looking your way, perfect weather, and other factors. I find I can often get halfway into that circle before I'm often detected on average, but it varies greatly.

And any merchant, plane, warship, tugboat, etc. if they spot you will radio your location, so if you see a fishing trawler and don't want to waste your ammo on it (saving it for bigger fish) its best to not let them see you to keep up the element of surprise. I heard someone say they will call in a destroyer only if its within like 25km though, and then it will only go to where your last known location was, and go away quickly if you're not there anymore. Planes seem to me to be sporadic at answering contact reports, I think they have to be within a certain radius to respond like the warships, but I don't know what that radius is.

[GC1CEO]

The first two links dont work, Red Devils page added an interesting tip or two on crew management (which is forever a pain at this point in my career). I have already read Avon Lady's FAQ.

By my 3rd patrol (upgraded to a IID which means I dont have to screw around on Ahead Third or Slow to save fuel anymore, thank god!), I am still just running into small stuff but my interception tactics are getting better and better. I haven't missed once (admittedly still using automatic targetting but you have to line up a good spot even for that!) since my 1st patrol, even snagged my first one-shot kill on a small merchant. Hopefully this means I may get 3 kills instead of my usual 2 this patrol, maybe even 4 kills.

I ditched the stealth meter bit mostly because I can't see the shades too well so its a bit pointless, even shades of black and red in this game I have to look really really closely.

On the matter of realism, if I'm operating at 100% realism does that mean no more radioed contacts every 12 hours or so?

[jasondef]

Hmm, I just clicked on the first two links off of my prior post, and they worked just fine. Maybe they take a bit if you have a slower connection. Or you can get to the links in an alternate way as follows:

At any rate, the first one can be found at gamespot.com. Go to gamespot.com/pc and search for Silent hunter 3 (for the PC) and when you bring up the SH3 page, along the top click on "Hints & Cheats" and then its on a link called "FAQ/Walkthrough by antseezee"

The second link can be found by doing a google for "Jason's silent hunter 3 survival guide" -its called like "Jason's postings and stuff" or something like that.

I've been playing a little over a month now, just finished my 15th patrol in still my first career. My intent was to play my first career with auto targetting, so I'm still using that myself, originally intending my second career for manual targetting and rub and iub mods etc. Its becoming way too easy though, and I didn't expect careers to be so long, so I may swith to manual targetting soon, as I'm still only in april 1941 and still have several years to go in my first career here!

So I don't know about 100% realism and the radio contacts, but I've heard and seen enough to guess that the radio contacts are not affected by realism and they will still be there.

I upgraded out of a type II as soon as I could to a VIIB, just for range if nothing else. In my type II though for the first few patrols, I would use the batteries as much as possible, running them down to 25% then surfacing, submerging as soon as they got back to 100%, running them down to 25%, and so on during transit to extend my fuel. Once you get to where suspected action is, that's risky, you don't want to run into escorts with only 25% batteries!

I've never had a problem with my stealth meter, colors always very clear and distinct. Though after a while, I found I never really look at it, as you get to know when you're stealthy or not just given the conditions and circumstances, and when you are "red" unstealthy, its usually at a spot where it can't be helped anyway. So I find once you get a feel for the game the stealth meter is just unecessary.

And it took me forever, maybe like after the tenth patrol before I ran into a convoy, it was always single merchants before that. Don't know if its that way for everybody. And since then, I've only come across them from radio reports (stationed at the flotilla out of Brest by then) and they tend to be in the "hunting grounds" mentioned in the Wiki.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by GC1CEO

Hello everybody, I just got SH3 a week ago and been learning the game. .

Welcome on board you come to the right place to get answers

[GC1CEO]

Links worked this time, they were just timing out before *shrugs*

I just had the fun of trying to intercept a ship at night in a storm, I my hydrophone showed me approximately 3-4 km away and I still couldn't get a visual on it.

[Rotary Crewman]

Originally Posted by GC1CEO

Anything good to go after when I'm in a IIA or IID?

I loved the little IIA. I got killed on my first career yesterday and decided to start a new one with the 2nd Flotilla. The VII isn't the same as my little IIA. I'm considering going back.

Anyway, with the IIA i found it very important to choose your targets wisely. Only having 5 torps makes you really think about what you go for. Plus you don't have the added advantage of a deck gun (Well i didn't in the 6 patrols i managed) so there is no chance of getting one with that.

Also, leaving from Kiel means a long old run around Denmark and usually east coast patrols. I recommend hanging around the southern ports till you find something nice and bigg for taking.

Good luck!

[Dowly]

Welcome aboard, Herr kaleun and good hunting!